In my early twenties, I wrote a book reimagining the California Dream. I really wanted to change California, but the world surprisingly did not drop everything for the opinions of a recent college graduate. So after working ~3 years, I quit my stable job analyzing infrastructure financings and started a publishing company with an old friend and a guy we met on craigslist. (Ha!)
We launched a contest in the model of a prize that inspired Rousseau to write his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality. The resulting essays were carefully designed into a zine. Along the way we had many adventures and learned lots of hard lessons. I then went back to grad school to study how digital data could revolutionize how we manage our cities.
Book link. (2011)
Book link. (2014)
Link to ARGO blog. (2015-19…)
Several friends and I there were able to get funding for our work and launched a startup nonprofit, ARGO, with a big vision to rewire how basic municipal services like street maintenance and a reliable water supply are delivered. Here is a summary of the projects we launched and here are a set of ARGO’s core theses for the future of government operations.
From that experimental lab phase, the unique water data collaborative that we launched continues on and is a globally cited example. Our team helped our partners save over $20 million in avoided capital costs, informed the optimization of almost half a billion dollars in turf rebates and delivered California’s first ever statewide water efficiency benchmarks. Learn more below.
